"When?I was in Sinai-the place where Moses received the Ten Commandments-I had a sort of negative revelation: to believe in one God you have to be a cretin. That is the only word for it. And the most crass religion is Islam. When you read the Koran you are appalled, simply appalled."
Thus spake Michel Houellebecq, France's most successful and controversial literary figure. In the three months following publication, his latest novel Plateforme has sold 300,000 copies, of which the fuss caused by the interview quoted above has probably contributed 60,000.
Plateforme came out in August. The literary magazine Lire published the interview to coincide with it. The four main Islamic groups in France issued a joint injunction on the grounds that Houellebecq was inciting racial hatred. The New York Times published an account of the interview on the morning of 11th September. "Of course my character wants to kill as many Muslims as he can," Houellebecq had said. "Vengeance exists. Islam is a dangerous religion."
Nutter? Prophet? Whichever, Houellebecq (pronounced, conveniently for English speakers, Welbeck) is no stranger to outrage. When Atomised was published in 1998, there was a serious attempt, only quashed by a judge's ruling, to have all copies burned. "Mongol alcoholic," is the way the editor of Lire describes Houellebecq, despite having championed him since his first novel slipped out unnoticed in 1994. "I regret Mongol," he told me. "What I meant was that, like a child with Down's syndrome, Houellebecq cannot be allowed out on his own." Insults fly freely and in all directions; it seems Houellebecq was not born with that inhibitor which prevents most of us saying what we think. In Plateforme, Frederick Forsyth is singled out as the author of "shitty (merdique) Anglo-Saxon bestsellers full of praise for Margaret Thatcher." According to Houellebecq, Anglo-Saxons "eat too much, drink too much beer, get far too fat; most will die young. I used to think sex tourism [the subject of his new novel] was about Germans-old and fat. But what I saw were loads of young Anglo-Saxons. The penny dropped when I realised for the Anglo-Saxon (male), sex is something for his holidays. The rest of the year he works a lot-he doesn't have time-and anyway it's far too difficult with the Anglo-Saxonne (female): they are so shitty and so complicated (tellement chiantes et tellement compliqu?)." Houellebecq prefers Germans. Arabs are benign sex tourists because, by definition, they cannot be good Muslims. But the worst are the Chinese, "recognisable from the Thais because they're so filthy-they eat like animals, laugh loudly scattering bits of food all around them, blow their noses with their fingers-they behave exactly the same as pigs. Let's not beat about the bush-they are pigs."
But Houellebecq's detractors say his politically incorrect rage is no more than a marketing ploy. Money from writing is tied to winning prizes. France's big literary prizes-the Medicis, the Femina and most important of all the Goncourt-are awarded around the end of October. Since the entire country closes down in August, any author wishing to be considered for a prize has to be published after the holidays but before mid-September. Since less than 1 per cent of books published during those three weeks will be opened by reviewers, what counts is getting talked about in caf?and courtrooms.
The Goncourt prize is awarded by a permanent jury of ten: the pillars of French literature. In 1998 Atomised, supported by the ancient and venerable President of the Academy Goncourt, François Nourissier, made it on to the first list. It was then thrown out by his nine younger colleagues, so it didn't make the second list. In the event, according to Le Monde, the winner's name was pulled from a hat. Houellebecq provided some suitably insulting comments about the winner, including unprintable remarks about cheques changing hands. Not winning merely improved Houellebecq's sales.
Now his status has changed: translated into 25 languages, he is cited as the spearhead of a new force (how long have we waited?) in the introspective world of French fiction. When the Goncourt's first list was published, Houellebecq was on it, despite his comments in Lire which by then were the subject of injunctions. But when the second list was published (after 11th September), Houellebecq's name had been removed; replaced by that of Alain Robbe-Grillet, who wasn't even on the first list. Scandal is too weak a word. It was a crisis in French letters. On 5th November the Goncourt winner was announced: Jean-Christophe Rufin's Rouge Br?l, by five votes to four. Where was the tenth vote? Mysteriously, it had gone to Houellebecq, even though he was no longer a candidate. As in 1998, he had been doggedly endorsed by Nourissier. To the other jurors, Houellebecq is a racist shit who should not even be published.
There is more to Houellebecq than posturing. His angry vision of the world is consistent: like any healthy adolescent (he is 43), he hates most things, but there is reason in his rage. His mother, a doctor on the French island of R?ion, neglected him for his first six years before packing him off to live with his maternal grandmother in France so that she could continue to explore the hedonism of the 1960s unimpeded. The child was put into one of those spine-chilling boarding schools portrayed by Vigo and Malle-and indeed by Houellebecq himself in Atomised. He has never seen either parent since, although he did hear quite recently that his mother had converted to Islam: "every time I heard that a Palestinian child or pregnant mother had been killed in the Gaza strip I felt a surge of happiness-one Muslim less," says Michel, the protagonist of Plateforme. (All Houellebecq's principle characters, like him, are called Michel). After school he was rejected for national service because of a morphine addiction. He spent time in various mental hospitals. ("The most interesting people I met were in asylums.") He began writing poetry, haphazardly, dashing off a few lines before each meeting of a local poetry society. Some were published. He got a job debugging computers in the National Assembly. He published a book about HP Lovecraft. His first collection of poems won the Tristan Tzara prize.
Given his mother's behaviour, it is not surprising he detests anything to do with the permissive society. He sees it as the first and worst example of cultural globalisation-which he also hates. In his second novel, Atomised, he makes a brutal study of the emotional desert created by 1960s "cultural revolutionaries," maintaining that their children are today's serial killers.
Atomised-about two half-brothers who know there is no point in looking for love, hope or meaning in a selfish, violent and hypocritical world-has touched a nerve among young British readers. In France it was more of a succès de scandale, because the cultural revolution of 1968 is sacrosanct. People living outside France find it hard to understand that men and women marked out as the intelligentsia get so worked up about ideas that had their brief flowering 33 years ago. But it is popularly believed that if the country is now wealthy, healthy and culturally imposing, it is because of the reforms fought for during May 1968. The suicidal existentialism of Camus and Sartre is accepted because their novels describe life under the pre-1968 r?me. If Houellebecq says life is even worse now, and his nihilism is lapped up by people too young to remember street-battles, tear-gas and relentless sit-ins, then of course all those decrepit soixante-huitards are going to roar collective defiance.
Lawsuits were brought against Atomised, principally by the owners of L'Espace du Possible, a campsite near Royan which began life as a left-wing free-love commune and evolved into a new-age hangout, complete with nude Gestalt-massage. English readers find those eight chapters of Atomised amusingly sexy (accurate, too, since Houellebecq has been a regular for the past 15 years). But the French left took serious issue with them and the court ordered the name and location of the campsite changed.
Certainly the world described by Houellebecq is a far cry from the gentle melancholy of that other traumatised child, François Truffaut-or the sanitised France now showing in Am?e. It may be that the French have problems confronting their immediate past: either it must be romanticised-the Resistance, 1968-or else studiously ignored. (François Nourissier himself has complained that few novels have dealt with the war in Algeria or multicultural France).
But Houellebecq has acquired notoriety primarily though his descriptions of sex. In the sex tourist world of Plateforme, the rich want exotic sex, uncomplicated by conversation; the poor want their money: the basis for a perfectly proper, if joyless, commercial exchange. Feminists take up arms on behalf of their sexploited sisters, Aids statistics are given their annual airing, carers bear witness to the lonely deaths of these sex slaves. Houellebecq replies simply, "it's not badly paid. In Thailand it's an honourable profession." He points to Holland and Germany, where prostitution is legal and controlled. In his novel, he repeatedly rubbishes the Guide Routard-an equivalent to the Rough Guide-for its prissy attitude to prostitution, calling its writers "Protestant humanitarian nerds." Out came the injunction, later dropped, although honour was satisfied when the founder of the Guide said Houellebecq was "writing disgraceful muck against the dignity of women." In the end, though, it is probably the joylessness of Houellebecq's vision of sex that has people at polite French dinner parties frothing.
His countrymen dislike him because he carries political incorrectness to new depths of vulgarity. More importantly, it is not done to make so much money from writing. To have left France-as Houellebecq has-is apostasy, but to have done so to avoid taxes is treason, especially for a former communist. Rage and insults continue to fly. His reaction? "It's made me start drinking again." This is a tragedy. He's one of only a handful of current French writers that other countries consider worth translating. His success with a new generation shows he has a vision of some kind. And when sober he is a good writer.
But maybe "Mongol alcoholic" is accurate. After the Lire interview his publisher cancelled all further interviews unless he could censor them, and packed his author off on the next plane home. This was seen as a Rushdie-like dash for cover in the face of Islamic retribution but in fact since he started making big money, Houellebecq has lived in Ireland, recently moving to Bere Island off Cork where there are more sheep than people. Since the epilogue of Atomised reveals that humanity ceased to exist circa 1968-kept going by cloning-sheep may be his best hope.
An English translation of "Plateforme" will be published by William Heinemann in late 2002
